VANCOUVER — The weekend of Oct. 19-20, Vancouver was in the midst of an “atmospheric river event,” a climate-change consequence that’s a new part of life in the Pacific Northwest. Despite torrents of rain and the general misery of the inclement weather, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra was able to go ahead with the Canadian premiere of Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s new violin concerto called Fandango on Oct. 19 at the Orpheum Theatre. Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers starred in the work, which she commissioned, in the context of a program put together by guest conductor Andrew Litton centered on a dance theme. It seemed brilliant in theory but proved less compelling in the concert hall.
Litton, who has served as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony, has conducted the VSO several times. On this occasion, he told his audience that the programming idea was in part suggested by his current gig as music director of the New York City Ballet.
The concert opened with Stravinsky’s divertimento The Fairy’s Kiss, a work on Litton’s docket for a performance with his own orchestra in May 2025. The Divertimento is a concert version of music Stravinsky composed in 1928 that revisits his practice of Stravinskyizing earlier composers, as in the more popular Pulcinella drawn from music of Pergolesi. Here the source material is Tchaikovsky. Perhaps as a staged ballet it would be brilliant; as concert music, its jumble of orchestration eccentricities and would-be grand-manner tunes is a bit disconcerting. At this performance, it was clearly under-rehearsed. To be fair, it’s not part of the VSO’s regular repertoire, and no doubt more time was spent on the new concerto to follow, but the result was an unfocused and listless reading.
That was certainly not the case in Márquez’s Fandango, newly minted music but ruthlessly traditional in form and substance, an ultra-conventional three-movement design with equally conventional tonal harmonies. But its attractive melodies, redolent of any number of specifically Latin American idioms, reveal a composer with a recognizable idiom who is secure in his craft.
The first movement, “Folia tropical,” launches with a short soliloquy for the soloist before a vital dance tune emerges from a more or less full orchestra. Notable quirks of Márquez’s orchestration are the omission of trumpets and a slightly too-often-used device whereby a trio of trombones and tuba provide a harmonic halo of sound over which the soloist can add effective filigree. A lyrical contrasting theme presented as a duet between clarinet and soloist is especially evocative. Márquez often makes use of extensive pizzicato in the orchestral strings, evocative in its own way and practical, too, in the way it rarely outshines the soloist.
If the first movement is brash and loaded with dance riffs, it’s still a grand-scale proposition; and as with similar weighty first movements from concertos of the Romantic era, the audience was roused to applaud at its conclusion. Meyers was only too happy to acknowledge the deserved ovation.
The second movement, “Plegaria” (Chacona), is sultry and very sexy. For the soggy audience who en route to the Orpheum Theatre had just grappled with the grim reality of a dark West Coast autumn downpour, it was fine indeed to dream of other places and climes full of heat and sunshine.
The finale, “Fandanguitto,” is a moto perpetuo; Meyers was kept very busy indeed while the orchestra provided back-up with the occasional bite. That Fandango celebrates many of Meyers’ particular bag of tricks should come as no surprise. Márquez was quoted in the newly revived VSO printed program brochure, back after several seasons of Covid-related hiatus: “In 2018 I received an email from violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, a wonderful musician, where she proposed to me the possibility of writing a work for violin and orchestra that had to do with Mexican music.”
Fandango will enjoy concert presence for as long as Meyers wishes to present it. Will it find a place in the concerto repertoire? In the fullness of time, it should appeal to other violinists with the necessary agility and flash; Márquez’s scoring deliberately flatters any soloist with a bright tone. He has set out to do two things: create a flashy vehicle for a star performer and use it to charm his audience. He writes: “I think that for every composer it is a real challenge to compose new works for old forms… I have preserved my seven capital principles: tonality, modality, melody, rhythm, imagery, folk tradition harmony, and orchestral color.” As a whole, the VSO audience tends to be wary of new music. Márquez’s work was instantly embraced, its Canadian launch an unqualified success.
The VSO packaged the premiere as part of its long-running “Musically Speaking” series, during which the conductor or soloist is expected to address the audience with commentary from the platform. Litton was just fine in his introductions to the Stravinsky and the Márquez, but his preface to the second half of the program was less effective. He made the curious decision to perform Ravel’s La valse (another work on his New York City Ballet spring docket) immediately following his rendition of Valses nobles et sentimentales, with no break.
Reading awkwardly from notes, he tried to justify the jerry-rigged “dance tone poem” he envisioned, but the subsequent performance failed to make his case. Valse nobles et sentimentales is a succession of discrete, self-contained episodes, a very different proposition to La valse, with its dark and disturbing trajectory.
In Valses nobles et sentimentales, the orchestra seemed disengaged, correct but lacking in finesse or feeling. It was significantly more present in La valse; Litton conveyed a sense of exuberance and a keen awareness of the piece’s wealth of detail. In a “Musically Speaking” performance just a year ago, guest conductor JoAnn Falletta gloried in the implicit violence of the score; Litton’s concept proved far more benign — and suffered by comparison.
